Jade Nielsen: Winner – Women Leader in Business Operations & Executive Support | International Women Awards 2026
- Great Companies
- Aug 10
- 9 min read
The 8th International Women Awards 2026 by Great Companies celebrates women who are building businesses, leading organizations, solving meaningful problems, and creating new possibilities through entrepreneurship and leadership.
Among this year's distinguished winners is Jade Nielsen, Founder and Owner of ABJ Chapman Services, honored as the Winner – Women Leader in Business Operations & Executive Support.
Based in College Station, Texas, USA, Jade has built ABJ Chapman Services around a powerful idea: entrepreneurs should not have to carry every part of their business alone.
Through business operations, executive support, bookkeeping, systems, project management, website development, automation, and fractional operations leadership, Jade and her team help business owners create companies that can grow without consuming their lives.
Company Overview
Leader: Jade Nielsen
Business: ABJ Chapman Services
Location: College Station, Texas, USA
Established: 2021
Award Category: Business Operations & Executive Support
Specialty: Business Operations, Executive Support & Consulting
Website: https://www.abjchapmanservices.com/
A Journey That Began with Resilience
Jade's entrepreneurial story began long before she officially founded ABJ Chapman Services.
At just 13 years old, she lost approximately 80% of the vision in her left eye due to retinitis pigmentosa.
At an age when many young people were beginning to imagine what their futures might look like, Jade was forced to confront uncertainty much earlier.
But rather than allowing the diagnosis to define the limits of her future, she chose to move forward.
That determination eventually took her to Texas A&M University, where she pursued engineering and challenged herself to succeed in a demanding technical field. In 2022, she graduated with a master's degree in Electronics Systems Engineering Technology.
Her early leadership experiences also shaped her future. In high school, Jade served as an officer in 12 organizations and captain of her cheerleading team.
Leadership, she realized, was something she wanted to pursue—not simply as a manager, but as someone who could help people and organizations operate better.
The First Client Who Changed Her Direction
While studying in college, Jade began developing knowledge in operations, finance, marketing, and business management.
Then, in 2017, she found her first client.
The client was a new business owner attempting to manage almost every aspect of her company herself—customers, finances, marketing, problem-solving, and growth.
Jade did not have a perfect roadmap or years of experience.
What she did have was a willingness to learn quickly, work hard, and help solve the problems in front of her.
That first client became her longest-standing client.
Years later, that entrepreneur had launched two additional businesses, and Jade had supported her through each stage of the journey.
The experience gave Jade a fundamental insight into entrepreneurship:
Many talented entrepreneurs do not struggle because they lack vision. They struggle because they are carrying the entire weight of that vision alone.
That realization became the foundation of ABJ Chapman Services.
From Engineer to Entrepreneur
While building her business, Jade continued developing her corporate career.
Over more than five years, she progressed into an Engineering Manager role, leading a team of 12 engineers.
She worked in an environment of approximately 50 men and was often the only woman in the room.
Those experiences taught her how to lead in environments that were not necessarily designed with women in mind.
She learned to communicate with confidence, make difficult decisions, solve complex problems, and earn the trust of the people she led.
Her engineering background would eventually become one of her greatest entrepreneurial strengths.
It gave her the ability to approach business operations systematically—identify problems, understand processes, create solutions, and continuously improve systems.
The Decision That Changed Everything
In 2024, Jade reached a major turning point.
When she began discussing the possibility of taking maternity leave in the future, the response made her question whether motherhood would be treated as an inconvenience rather than a natural part of her life.
She had spent years proving herself in a male-dominated engineering environment.
Now she faced another decision:
Continue building someone else's vision while wondering whether motherhood would limit her future—or take the risk of building something of her own.
Jade resigned from her corporate career.
Two weeks later, she discovered she was pregnant.
It was one of the most frightening decisions of her life.
At the time, ABJ was not yet generating enough income to replace her corporate salary. Jade had been the primary breadwinner for her family, while she and her husband were also physically building their home.
The decision therefore involved much more than a career change.
It involved her family's financial security, their home, and the future they were preparing for.
Turning Risk into Growth
Fear, however, did not stop Jade.
Instead, she worked relentlessly to strengthen the company.
She improved the services, strengthened systems, expanded the team, increased pricing, and fully embraced her role as a business owner.
The result was significant.
From the end of 2024 through July 2026, ABJ Chapman Services increased its annual revenue by more than 450%.
Today, ABJ provides a broad range of services including:
Business Operations
Executive Support
Bookkeeping Support
Website Development
Automation
Project Management
Marketing Implementation
Systems Development
Fractional Operations Leadership
The company's mission is straightforward:
Help business owners stop wearing every hat.
More Than a Virtual Assistant Company
One of the strongest differentiators of ABJ Chapman Services is that the company does not position itself simply as a virtual assistant provider.
It operates as a broader business support and operations partner.
ABJ helps entrepreneurs manage the work behind their businesses so they can focus on leadership, customers, strategy, and growth.
The company provides executive assistance, email and calendar management, customer service, CRM management, client follow-up, bookkeeping, invoicing, payroll administration, project management, team coordination, vendor management, SOP documentation, KPI tracking, websites, systems, automation, and more.
For established companies, Jade also provides Fractional COO leadership, helping organizations with strategic planning, KPI management, team accountability, department oversight, executive decision support, and operational improvement.
Solving the Founder Bottleneck
Jade understands a problem faced by many growing businesses.
The company may be successful, but the operations have not grown with it.
Important tasks remain inside the founder's head.
Emails and follow-ups are missed.
Projects stall without the owner's involvement.
Financial tasks fall behind.
Employees constantly need direction.
Growth creates more work instead of more freedom.
ABJ's role is to change that equation.
The team steps into the daily details, organizes the moving parts, creates processes, establishes accountability, and helps build an operation that does not depend entirely on the founder.
A Partnership Built Around the Entrepreneur
Jade's approach is particularly distinctive because she looks beyond the business itself.
She asks what the business owner is ultimately trying to protect.
For one entrepreneur, success may mean increasing revenue.
For another, it may mean attending their child's school event without answering emails.
For someone else, it may mean finally taking a vacation without worrying that the business will collapse in their absence.
ABJ therefore measures success differently.
Success can be:
A business owner breathing easier.
A founder making decisions from clarity rather than exhaustion.
A parent being present with their family.
An entrepreneur realizing that asking for help can make greater growth possible.
From Doing Everything to Building a Team
One of Jade's most important leadership lessons has been learning to delegate.
For years, being capable and dependable meant being willing to handle almost anything herself.
But as ABJ grew, that mindset became a limitation.
She had to learn that leadership does not mean being the person who does everything.
Leadership means creating a vision clear enough for others to carry.
That meant documenting processes, training people, communicating expectations, and trusting talented team members to solve problems in their own ways.
In many ways, Jade had to apply to herself the same lesson she had been teaching her clients:
You do not have to carry your business alone.
Building the Business Behind the Business
ABJ's services cover the critical infrastructure that allows growing businesses to function effectively.
Executive & Business Support
The company helps founders protect their time through executive assistance, calendar and email management, customer support, CRM management, client follow-up, meeting preparation, document organization, and administrative support.
Bookkeeping & Financial Administration
ABJ also supports businesses with bookkeeping, transaction management, account reconciliation, invoicing, accounts receivable, payroll administration, financial reporting, and bookkeeping cleanup.
Operations & Project Management
The team helps turn ideas into completed work through project management, task delegation, team coordination, vendor management, process improvement, SOP documentation, KPI tracking, reporting, and risk management.
Systems & Automation
ABJ builds digital infrastructure through website development, CRM systems, internal tools, workflow automation, integrations, dashboards, Google Sheets and Excel solutions, AI integration, and custom applications.
Fractional COO Leadership
For more established businesses, Jade provides executive-level operational leadership designed to connect strategy with execution.
Her Fractional COO work includes strategic planning, operational audits, workflow optimization, KPI development, organizational planning, team development, accountability systems, and executive decision support.
Creating Businesses That Can Run Without the Founder
Jade's larger vision is not simply to complete more tasks for entrepreneurs.
It is to help them create organizations that can operate effectively without requiring the founder's involvement in every decision.
Through her Fractional COO approach, she works with leadership teams to establish meeting rhythms, department accountability, operational scorecards, SOPs, clear ownership, executive reporting, and strategic priorities.
The ultimate goal is simple:
Build a company that can continue growing without depending on the founder for every decision.
The Courage to Build Differently
Jade's journey has included obstacles that could have easily changed the direction of her life.
Vision loss at a young age.
Entering a male-dominated engineering profession.
Becoming a manager in a challenging corporate environment.
Leaving a secure corporate career.
Discovering she was pregnant just two weeks after resigning.
Building a business without the financial security of her former salary.
And eventually learning that the very qualities that helped her succeed—independence, capability, and the willingness to carry everything—could also become barriers to the company's growth.
Her response was not to eliminate fear.
It was to keep moving despite it.
Her Advice to Women Entrepreneurs
Jade's advice to women entrepreneurs is deeply connected to her own experience.
Do not confuse carrying everything alone with being strong.
Women are often expected to build businesses while simultaneously managing families, households, relationships, and expectations about professional success.
Jade believes that true leadership requires something different.
Know what only you can do.
Then build support around everything else.
Document processes.
Build systems.
Delegate before exhaustion makes the decision for you.
Trust your team.
And give talented people the opportunity to grow alongside you.
She also believes women should not wait until they feel completely ready.
She was not ready when she accepted her first client.
She was not ready when she entered engineering.
She was not ready when she became an engineering manager.
And she was certainly not ready when she left her corporate career and discovered she was pregnant two weeks later.
But she continued forward.
Readiness did not build her future. Courage, discipline, faith, and consistent action did.
A New Definition of Success
Perhaps the most powerful message in Jade's story is that women should not have to choose between ambition and life.
She believes women are allowed to want:
Success and presence.
Ambition and family.
Leadership and balance.
They can build meaningful companies without sacrificing everything that makes life meaningful.
Her own journey—from engineering to entrepreneurship, from serving one overwhelmed founder to building an operations company, and from carrying everything herself to developing a team—is a powerful example of that philosophy.
The Future of ABJ Chapman Services
ABJ Chapman Services is positioned around a growing need among entrepreneurs: professional operational support that connects strategy, implementation, systems, and leadership.
Rather than simply adding more people to a business, Jade's approach focuses on building stronger infrastructure behind it.
The company's model allows clients to begin with business support, move into deeper operational coordination, and eventually access Fractional COO leadership as their organizations become more complex.
Jade's vision is ultimately about creating businesses that support the lives of the people who build them.
That makes her work about more than operations.
It is about freedom, sustainability, leadership, and the ability to build a successful business without losing yourself in the process.
Official Recognition
Jade Nielsen, Founder and Owner of ABJ Chapman Services, has been recognized as the Winner – Women Leader in Business Operations & Executive Support at the 8th International Women Awards 2026 by Great Companies.
Her recognition celebrates her entrepreneurial resilience, operational expertise, leadership experience, commitment to supporting business owners, and her work in helping entrepreneurs build businesses with stronger systems, greater accountability, and sustainable growth.
Her story is a reminder that sometimes the greatest entrepreneurial opportunity comes when life forces us to reconsider the path we thought we were supposed to follow.
And sometimes, building something of your own is not simply about creating a business.
It is about creating a life that the business is designed to support.
About the International Women Awards
The International Women Awards by Great Companies celebrates inspiring women entrepreneurs, founders, executives, professionals, and business leaders from around the world.
The awards recognize women who demonstrate leadership, resilience, innovation, business excellence, and meaningful contribution to their industries and communities.
Jade Nielsen's journey represents the spirit of this recognition: building with courage, leading with purpose, and creating success without losing sight of the life that success is meant to support.